I want to preface this by saying the technical problem I had was of my own doing, and once I talked to someone who had a clue it was fixed in two minutes.
Then, there’s this unintentional comedy! I went to the Amazon Kindle support page, as I’d tried their email support and they couldn’t even be bothered to try, I got ‘please open a chat window’ as their response email.
A chat was begun:
You are now connected to Amazon from Amazon.com.Me:my kindle fire DH 7″ seems to think it’s in the UK. The .com button in the lower right of the keyboard displays .co.uk, and when searching for websites it always offers the .co.uk ones as the recommended ones.I’ve checked my country setting under manage my devices (US). Serial Number: ####
Amazon:Hello.. This is Sweety from the Digital Team.Welcome to Amazon Digital Chat.I am glad to help you.I am very sorry to hear about this.[pause]Let me look into this.[pause]Since your query is regarding the Kindle, let me help you by transferring you to our Kindle Specialist. Please be on hold.A Customer Service Associate will be with you in a moment.[this is after telling the Amazon support page my problem is with a Kindle to start the chat…]You are now connected to S*** from Amazon.com.[I have changed this persons’ name so they won’t get abused like they should be]S***: Hello, my name is S***. I’ll be happy to help you.Me:hi[long, long pause]?S***:I checked and see that your Kindle has been registered under Amazon.com.Me:Good.S***:Is there anything else I can do for you today ?Me:Yes. Fix the problem, or even pretend you understand what it is.S***:I’m sorry.Could you please rephrase the above sentence?Me:Here is my problem:my kindle fire DH 7″ seems to think it’s in the UK. The .com button in the lower tright of the keyboard displays .co.uk, and when searching for websites it always offers the .co.uk ones as the recommended ones.I’ve checked my country setting under manage my devices (US). Serial Number: ####I want my kindle to understand its keyboard, and it itself aren’t in the UK, and to stop behaving that way.S***:I can confirm that your Kindle is registered under Amazon.com. Your Kindle with serial #### is Kindle Fire HD.Me:Would you be so kind as to transfer me to the next level or technical support please?S***:Sure, [me].Could you please provide me the best possible phone number to connect you right now?Me:[a phone number]S***:When your phone rings, please answer it.You may hear ringing while we connect you to Customer Service.Your call is now connected.
Yep. That happened.
I then spent 10 minutes on the phone with a first level tech person, and an escalation got me to ‘Todd’, who was sharp, and had my problem fixed in about 2 minutes.
Still. Comedy support gold.
You left S***’s name in once.
[GD: Yes, I did, thanks for pointing it out. Fixed. Here, too…]
I have Kindle HD and had to go through support. Since I am fairly tech savvy, I try and fix the problem myself. However, if I cannot, I bypass the online chat support and request a phone call. There’s an option where you can request a phone call, leave your number and they call you within a certain period of time, usually less than an hour.
I had to call because my Kindle was a gift but he did not think to register the Kindle under my name. He just bought it under his account. I had to have them change the registration to my name so that I could download all my books. I bypassed the chat support as I knew that I would be transferred and would experience what you experienced.
Sometimes, you just can’t hire good help.
Nope, you most certainly can’t. I wish Amazon could find a way to deal with the problem of banning people from their site and from accessing their previous purchases.
Kind of amazed… I’ve had to contact Amazon Customer Support a couple times for a broken Kindle (I’m not the easiest person on them as it tends to go everywhere with me) and I would have said they’ve been about the easiest Customer Support people to work with. I must’ve gotten lucky!
I went through similar silliness.
I bought my Kindle Touch last August. I have never been able to borrow books from the Kindle Lending Library. It errors out. I had a suspicion that it might have something to do with how I renamed the Kindle when I got it.
In the past when I tried to get it fixed, I got frustrated with their tech support and bailed on the process. I had been told that I would have to call, email or chat was unable to resolve the issue.
Last Friday I called. It took two hours. Most of it was tech support people assuring me that I had already checked out a book from the lending library and I had to return it. “Okay, tell me which book in my lending library is the checked out one, and I will return it”, Silence, Silence, Silence, let me transfer you.
The 3rd person I talked to was able to resolve it. I had to deregister the device and reregister it. The root cause was corruption in a table regarding my device name.
Why, yes, one of my many hats is database administrator for an ERP system.
I have a Kindle Fire HD and I love this thing. It was easy to understand and I love the interface. Here’s the one I have on Amazon http://amzn.to/UBAU84. If you’re looking for a tablet you should check it out, I think it’s very underrated.
Yeah, I wish my customer service experience with Amazon was quickly resolved (even with as much hilarity as you got), but I have been banned from Amazon since September and no one there seems willing or able to help me rectify the problem or figure out how to access my digital content.
I got a HD Fire for Christmas, my request. I’m on my third Kindle product. My first one got dropped and was within the warranty period so they sent me a new one complete in the box and asked me to return the old one sans accessories. So now I have two Kindle cables and re-chargers socket thingies (more on that in a sec)
My first two Kindles are the keyboard model and after breaking my first I had to but a case. I really hated doing that. The size was a major attraction initially, now it’s like a large cell phone or a small tablet…bulky.
I thought “color must be better” so I asked Santa for the Fire HD.
First, I was surprised and a little annoyed it didn’t come with a charging cable and re-charger socket thingy, but I had two so no problem. Now it has started turning off while I’m reading. If I do a hard re-boot it works for a few days then starts turning off again. I’m going to have to ask for a new one but that’s not the real problem.
The Fire sucks for reading when compared to the keyboard model. The battery life in the keyboard is phenomenal, it’s light, changing pages is intuitive and the text is wonderful.
My wife catches me with the old one and I tell her the Fire is charging when in reality I just like the keyboard better for reading. One cool thing is if you are reading a book on one Kindle and pick up the other one it gives you the option of syncing to the furthest page read in the book.
Oh the joy of tech support. I had several conversations with different tech support’s in the past that i wish I had recorded. It’s like they just hire random people and tell them to talk about random stuff. And when they finally hire a guy that have a clue, then they promote him/her. The first level of support is just a waste of time.